'Nothing Will Be the Same': A Prison Town Weighs a Future Without a Prison - The New Yo... - 5 views
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now almost every aspect of the town’s economy and civic life, from real estate to local schools, depends on the prison
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Perhaps inevitably, then, the plans to close the prison have become political. Most of the town’s leaders say they believe the plans are a vendetta from Mr. Newsom to punish them for their conservative politics, rather than the fruition of efforts over many years to change the criminal justice system, some approved by voters through ballot measures.
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The announcement that California would close two prisons was hailed as a milestone by activists, the culmination of years of new sentencing laws and the work of liberal prosecutors that sharply reduced the number of people in prisons across the state. At their most crowded, California prisons housed more than 160,000 people. Today, they hold just under 100,000.